Kent Alexander to All Scripts

Kent Alexander, who spent the last ten years as the Chief Counsel to Emory University, is moving on to chief legal counsel at Allscripts in Chicago.

It's been a while since last I referenced Alexander but here's a feature on him from nearly three years ago.

New Feature on Dr. Anna Chacko: the Conclusion

Here is the conclusion of my latest feature on Dr. Anna Chacko. Part one is here.

UPDATE: Please also check out my new book, The Definitive Dossier on PTSD in Whistleblowers, in which I dedicate chapter four entirely to the exploits of Dr. Anna Chacko. 

My New Chacko Feature

It only begins today, part one is here. Check out the conclusion tomorrow.

Breaking Non Farm Payroll Negative 131,000

There was a slight gain in private jobs but 141000 census workers lost their jobs.

Companies in the U.S. added workers in July for a seventh straight month at a pace that suggests the labor-market recovery will be slow to take hold.

Private payrolls that exclude government agencies rose by 71,000, less than forecast, after a gain of 31,000 in June that was smaller than previously reported, Labor Department figures in Washington showed today. Economists projected a 90,000 rise in private jobs, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey. Overall employment fell 131,000 and the jobless rate held at 9.5 percent.

Watch the administration spin this positively but this is awful. Best case scenario we have a U shaped recovery in jobs. Worst case scenario we'll pull back into a double dip. That means we'll have high unemployment for most, if not all, of Obama's first term.

Chacko Memo II

UPDATE: Please also check out my new book, The Definitive Dossier on PTSD in Whistleblowers, for only $3.95, in which I dedicate chapter four entirely to the exploits of Dr. Anna Chacko. 

I just received this from a source at the Pittsburgh VA. This, according to the source, is the other side of the story of the allegations that Dr. Chacko is making against the Pittsburgh VA. Here are the charges that Chacko laid out.
Also, here's the Pittsburgh Tribune story that started all this.
...

You be the judge about Dr Chacko’s claims of radiation overexposure.
The detailed story of the technetium/Thallium utilization for Cardiac Stress testing at the Pittsburgh VA.
VAPHS has switched to using Technetium for the cardiac stress tests, many years ago, from the regular utilization of Thallium, the stadard of care in many institution, even today. Technetium offers a slightly lower dose of radioactivity and faster clearance.
There have been occasional national and international shortages of technetium when specific nuclear reactors are down. VAPHS has a contingency plan to use Thallium, a widely utilized nuclear isotope for cardiac stress test, in case of Technetium shortages.
VAPHS has a specific contract with a licensed vendor to provide unit dose radioactive material on a regular basis to serve the veterans and hospital patient care needs. The vendor has to maintain a copy of the VAPHS current United States Nuclear regulatory (NRC) license to use specific radioactive material. All the details are spelled out in the contract, and have been in effect for several years. The vendor is NOT General Electric (GE).
On the day Dr Chacko describes, there was a shortage of technetium. Dr Chacko independently calls a “friend” in General Electric(GE) and requested the delivery of technitium directly to the nuclear medicine department at the VAPHS. A nuclear pharmacist from GE was tasked to fly to Cleveland to prepare the isotopes and drive them to Pittsburgh, as ordered.
The Unit doses were delivered to the VAPHS, at her request, followed by a bill to the VAPHS to pay General Electric for the radioisotope, and the urgent shipping cost. These isotopes were never used to inject veterans.
Here is what was wrong with this arrangement:

1. The VAPHS has an exclusive contract with a vendor, and cannot deviate from the contract.
2. The nuclear medicine staff had no idea what was in those isotope vials, and were not about to inject patients with isotopes that just showed up at the door, with no prior arrangements, or the safety of a contract for liability.
3. None of these arrangements were cleared by the VA administration or the contracting office.
4. This was under the watch of her friend Dr Rashmikant Shah (Bob Shah, as he might be known), who she had put in charge of Nuclear Medicine Department at that time, and who had agreed to using the Thallium instead of cancelling patients.
5. GE did not have a copy of the VAPHS license to use radioisotope, and may have committed an illegal act by just sending the radioactive material to Pittsburgh at that time. (The NRC should look into this and similar practices that may be going on by this vendor who was striving to gain “special vendor status” with VAPHS under Dr. Chacko’s watch.
6. When the contracting officer told Dr Chacko that this would be an unacceptable breach of contract, Dr Chacko threatened to sue the contracting officer for not going along with her plan.
7. When the Adminitrative officer objected, she was subjected to retatalliation and spreading rumors of incompetency and harming patients.
8. When the lead tech objected to breaking the contract, and injecting patients with unknown material delivered by an unknown vendor to us, for no “life threatening reason”, he too got harshly reprimanded and threatened to loose his job, by Dr Chacko. She also spread false accusations about his incompetence and inadequacy for the job (heis a licensed Nuclear medicine technologist with decades of experience in Nuclear medicine)
9. To put all this into perspective, one should compare the radiation exposure of the one dose Thallium, one dose technetium and one CT scan. I will leave this to the radiologists and physicists to figure out, and see how can Dr Chacko, a nuclear medicine physician, have any credibility in her field.
10. Dr Chacko preys on the ignorants and unsuspecting naïve, and there are too many of them out there.
11. Dr Chacko’s complained loudly, and triggered a Medical Inspector General team’s visit who found no fault by the VAPHS in dealing with the shortages. They commended the VAPHS technical and administrative staff for the efforts to get to the bottom of Dr Chacko’s complaints, locally, and for doing the right thing.

A Split with the Watchers of Weasels

I've been asked to leave the Watcher's Council, of which I've been a part since about this time in 2008.

This week I've nominated this piece on the Chicago poet Kevin Coval. Coval holds some strong opinions on Palestine and Israel and the Council doesn't agree with those opinions. I was told that by nominating this piece was "hitting a raw nerve" and "rubbing their faces in it."

Ironically enough, Coval himself has been uninvited from several scheduled performances for these views. More ironic however is this. In November of 2009, the Watcher's Council had this set of nominees. Included in the nominations was this piece by Michael Gaynor (we each nominate one of our own weekly and one from another source) That is a hit piece on ME. Council member Terry Trippany thought that was the best piece he'd read all week by outside sources.

In other words, writing a hit piece on a member of the council is appropriate but writing about a poet with anti Israel views hits a nerve and is worthy of being expelled. The audience can decide if that sounds right.

Here again is Coval's pinnacle performance.

Dr. Mary Johnson on Dr. Chacko

Dr. Mary Johnson is herself a whistle blower in North Carolina and she's none too happy with Dr. Chacko wrapping the "whistle blower" flag around herself.